


Ash

by minkowski



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Christmas, Hanukkah, Holidays, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 06:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9111121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkowski/pseuds/minkowski
Summary: The holidays on the Hephaestus. Lovelace and Eiffel celebrate a birthday. Hera gives Minkowski a gift. Hilbert reflects. Plus: the seventh worst birthday-slash-Christmas of all time, the Star Wars holiday special, a complete inability to communicate in an emotionally healthy manner, the laws of physics, and the barest semblance of humanity.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a (late) Wolf 359 Secret Santa gift for @dingusmcdougall over on Tumblr. Please go follow her, she's great!! (I'm so sorry this is so late!)
> 
> This completely ignores the events at the end of season 3, because I thought it might be hard to write some holiday-themed short stories considering the recent events. Also, Kepler, Jacobi, and Maxwell aren't here, because as much as I would love to read a fic involving their weird-ass holiday traditions, I'm not creative enough to write about it.
> 
> Also, @ anyone who understands science: Is it possible to spin a dreidel in space?
> 
> Comments and feedback are much appreciated!!

Isabel Sofia Lovelace was a woman of many talents, but knocking before she entered a room was not one of them.

She threw herself into Officer Eiffel’s room with a gusto she typically reserved for battles with a mutant plant monster, slightly out of breath, words already halfway out of her mouth before she entered the room. “Kepler says there’s something up with the main cooling system, and everyone else is busy, so he wanted me to grab you. Well, actually, he said something more along the lines of ‘Everyone else with a semblance of competence is busy being competent, so—’”

She paused, absorbing Eiffel’s current state. He was hovering somewhere just above her head, nearly touching the ceiling. He hadn’t seemed to notice her entrance, or if he had, he was just ignoring her, despite the fact that she was his superior officer. “Eiffel?” Lovelace said, unsure of whether or not she should continue.

Eiffel let out a sigh, indicating that he had, in fact, noticed her presence, and pushed himself away from the ceiling. “What?”

Lovelace recognized that she had always had a short fuse, and although she had always tried to work on that aspect of herself back on earth, she had let herself get more irritated since the floating-through-space-and-getting-stuck-back-on-the-Hephaestus portion of her life. One of the things that happened to irritate her was when people pitied themselves in an over-the-top manner, which Eiffel happened to be doing right now. “Hey, can you snap out of it?”

Eiffel glanced back down at her, looking a little startled. “Snap out of what?”

Lovelace aimed a punch at his left shoulder, but, unfortunately, he was hovering just a few inches too high. “Snap out of this. This floating, whiny, ignoring-your-superior-officer thing that you’re doing. You want to stop acting like a moody teen and come help me with the cooling system?”

There was silence for a few moments before Eiffel was bobbing at about eye contact with Lovelace. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ll be down in a sec, I just…”

He yawned, running a hand through his long, greasy hair. Lovelace took in his current state—deep smudges of purple underneath each eye, deadened eyes, a general unshowered appearance. 

“Whoa,” Lovelace said, raising an eyebrow. “You look like shit.”

He let out a grunt that could have been a forced laugh or a groan. “Thanks. Always good to hear.” He stumbled over to the communications panel, fiddling with the vast array of switches and buttons.

“Eiffel? Are you, uh…” It wasn’t like Lovelace hadn’t gotten used to seeing everyone look like shit—everyone on the crew of the Hephaestus typically looked like corpses that had just been revived—but there was something different about Eiffel, something different than his typical “recently revived corpse, but having a good time” look.

He glanced over at Lovelace, shoulders rising in a half-shrug. “Do you know what day it is?”

Lovelace rolled her eyes. “You honestly think I know what day it is? Does it matter? I dunno, maybe it’s June first, maybe—”

She stopped, because she did remember. “Oh. Right. It’s Christmas. Oh, also—” Another memory. “Hey, happy birthday!”

Eiffel’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “My two favorite holidays.”

Lovelace raised an eyebrow. “You’re not into Christmas? You seem like, I dunno…”

Eiffel snorted, fiddling with the controls. “Yeah, well, what can I say? The Star Wars holiday special kind of ruined it for me.”

Lovelace laughed. “Okay, that’s fair.”

There were a few moments of silence before Eiffel twisted around to look back at Lovelace. “You’re into Christmas?”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

“Huh.”

Lovelace raised an eyebrow in response to the skeptical look she was getting from Eiffel. “Something wrong?”

Eiffel cracked a smile for the first time since Lovelace had thrown herself into his room. “I dunno, you seem like…I mean, you know, I’m trying to imagine you celebrating anything. Getting really into the Christmas spirit. You know, singing carols and everything.”

Lovelace aimed a punch at his shoulder, and this time, she made contact. Satisfied with his groan of pain, she spoke, rolling her eyes a little. “I never sang carols. I just like it in general. You know.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“My mom…” Lovelace grinned despite herself. “You know, she got really into the holidays. We’d celebrate both Christmas and Kwanzaa, you know? She would always sing around the house for, like, all of December. It was nice.”

“That does sound…nice.” Another small smile appeared on Eiffel’s face for a half second. “It’s still weird imagining you as, like, this little kid, with parents and everything.”

“Why is it weird?”

A look flickered across Eiffel’s face, and Lovelace could tell he already regretted saying it. “No reason. Sorry. Repairs? Should we go do those?”

“Nah, he’ll call us if it’s a real emergency.” Lovelace sat down on the floor across from Eiffel’s control panel, legs sprawled across the metal floor. “It’s weird imagining you as a little kid, too, you know. So I’m guessing you didn’t exactly have, you know, the Lovelace family experience?”

Eiffel gave a rueful smile. “Not exactly. The Eiffel family experience is, you know, more ‘Let’s all pretend we don’t know what day it is so we can ignore two holidays at once: Christmas and our son’s birthday!’” He raised his arms in mock victory, then sighed, reclining in the air. “Let’s just say that this is the seventh worst birthday-slash-Christmas of all time.”

“Oh.” Lovelace wondered if she should offer some sort of apology, but decided against it. “What’s, uh…what’s the first worst?”

Eiffel raised his eyebrows. “Anne.”

It took Lovelace a few moments to remember who he was talking about. After spending a year on the Hephaestus with these people who never talked about their families, it was jarring whenever anyone actually came up. “Oh,” she said without really meaning to. “Right.”

“I don’t know, not seeing her…” He shook his head. “It makes sense. I understand it, okay? Obviously her mother wanted a restraining order. It makes sense. But—” He sighed, reclining in midair, floating on his back as though he was in a swimming pool. “I miss her.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

Eiffel raised his eyebrows, barely concealing a snort. “Do you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you get it? Because I feel like the whole being an alcoholic and putting a kid in a wheelchair and destroying your daughter’s ability to hear anything is a Doug Eiffel Original.”

“You—” Lovelace paused. “Okay, I’ll give it to you, that experience is pretty specific. Look, I don’t understand a lot about fatherhood or whatever, but—”

Eiffel snorted again, this time not even trying to conceal his contempt. “Remember, you come from the perfect family, where things never went wrong—”

“I don’t have a father, you idiot.”

Eiffel blinked. “What? Yes, you do.”

It was Lovelace’s turn to laugh dryly. “I mean, sure, biologically or whatever, you know? But he left my mom before I was born. She’s pretty awesome—raised me on her own, worked two jobs, wasn’t an asshole. But, you know, you can keep on living in your fantasy world where you’re the only one who’s ever been miserable, or you can—”

The intercom crackled with static. Kepler’s voice rang out through the room, filled with barely concealed ire. “If Officer Eiffel and Captain Lovelace could report to the Urania? Thank you.”

There was a long silence. Kepler’s announcement had broken the tension in the room like a sword shattering a freshly frozen lake. Lovelace turned back to Eiffel, but he seemed to have forgotten what either of them were saying.

“Sorry,” he said, voice clipped. “I’m a little off my game today. It’s, uh—” He cleared his throat, tilting his head away from Lovelace. “It’s not exactly the best time of the year for me.”

Not for the first time, Lovelace found herself confronted with her complete inability to communicate in an emotionally healthy manner. After struggling with an appropriate response for nearly a full minute, she managed a short “Sucks” and a stiff pat on Eiffel’s shoulder.

For some reason, this seemed to comfort Eiffel. “Thanks,” he said in a short, clipped tone, brushing his hair out of his face. “Your thing sucks, too.”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks. No problem.” Lovelace got the sense he might try to hug her, and had the sudden urge to sprint from his quarters. “You okay?”

“Fine. I’ll be fine.” His lips parted, as though he had something else to say, and he shook his head ruefully, something resembling a smile on his face. “We used to sing a lot, together. Old songs. She was—she loved music.”

“Oh. I’m…” Sorry? What was Lovelace supposed to say to something like that? “That sounds nice.”

“Yeah. It was.” He cleared his throat and straightened his uniform, a trace of a smile still on his face. “Let’s go.”

“Whatever you say, Luke.”

“Luke?”

“Star Wars holiday special? I thought you were kind of the pop culture guy here on the Hephaestus.”

Eiffel let out a grudging laugh. “You’re making me Luke? Really?”

“Sure. I’m Han Solo.”

Eiffel laughed again, though it sounded a little indignant this time. “Really? You get to be Han Solo? We’re going to need to talk about—”

But Lovelace was on a roll now, listing off the names on her fingers. “Minkowski is Chewbacca, obviously, and her mystery husband is Malla. Hera is, I dunno, Leia, and she better sing some Life Day song before Christmas is over. Hilbert’s the Stormtroopers who break Lumpy’s doll—”

“Kepler is the surprise appearance from Jefferson Starship,” broke in Eiffel.

Lovelace grinned, aiming a punch at his shoulder. “Exactly. Now can you stop moping?” 

Eiffel winced, grabbing his shoulder. “If you promise never to punch me that hard again, then sure.”

Lovelace pushed open the door to his quarters, laughing. “Happy birthday, Officer Eiffel.”


	2. Chapter 2

Hera’s voice broke into the engine room with a sharp crackle of static. “Lieutenant Minkowksi? Are you busy?”

Minkowski took a sip of her seaweed-tasting coffee and glanced over at the speakers. “Nope. Just finished my work assignment. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just—” Hera paused, silently cursing herself. She should have scripted this out beforehand—how was she supposed to lure Minkowski into an empty, enclosed room without sounding like she was trying to suck all the oxygen from her quarters? “Are you heading back down to your quarters?”

“Actually, I was going to get more coffee.” A note of suspicion snuck into Minkowski’s voice. “Hera, you don’t need to lie—what’s really wrong? Did Eiffel do something?”

“What? No! I was just thinking, uh, it—it might be a good idea if you went down to your quarters. It’s not really a big deal or anything, I was just hoping that you might want to—”

Minkowski was moving now, pushing herself along the walls of the ship to move as fast as she should in zero gravity. “Hera, can you tell me what’s wrong? Can you give me a hint?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Hera would have laughed if Minkowski didn’t sound so terrified. “Lieutenant, slow down, it’s nothing—”

But Minkowski was already at her quarters, flinging the doors open. She stood for a few moments, panting, hands on her knees, brown eyes twitching and trying to take in every detail. Everything looked as it had always looked: perfectly made bed, pristine floor, nothing but necessities. 

“What’s happening, Hera?” said Minkowski, sounding highly agitated. “Is this some kind of joke? Is this—” A look of horrified realization fell over her face. “Oh, God, is it the buzzer again?”

“It’s not the buzzer again. Lieutenant, if you look…”

So maybe Hera didn’t entirely understand how the gift-giving process worked. The first Christmas Hera remembered was aboard the Hephaestus. Minkowksi had tried to convince Hilbert to synthesize something similar to turkey. Minkowski had also attempted to make homemade gifts for Eiffel and Hilbert, but grew frustrated with the crafting process and gave up. Minkowski had not tried to make a gift for Hera. Hera knew this because she had watched every second of the process, had filed it away in the back of her mind without really meaning to, the same way she remembered everything.

So maybe Hera didn’t know the best way to do this whole thing, this idea she had been considering for the past few months. So maybe she wasn’t exactly capable of wrapping the present, and she couldn’t exactly hand the present to Minkowski. So maybe she had to tell Minkowski to walk to her quarters, terrifying her commanding officer. So maybe there were some flaws with the whole plan.

So maybe by this point, Minkowski was nearing heart palpitations, and Hera had to say, “Look on your bed, Lieutenant.”

Minkowski stopped talking and glanced at her neatly made bed. “What? I don’t see—oh.” Recognition registered on her face, and she took a few steps over to her bed. She picked up the mystery item, turning it over and over in her hands until her eyes showed recognition.

Hera couldn’t have known what it felt like, but she could imagine it. She had seen it hundreds of thousands of times, flickering across her consciousness. It was a homemade dreidel, crafted out of some spare pieces of metal, a symbol engraved on each of the four sides. It was imperfectly made, and too heavy to spin well, but it was there, and from the look on Minkowski’s face, Hera could tell it was enough.

“Hera,” breathed Minkowski, examining the dreidel more closely. “Is this—” She took a breath, shaking her head. “It’s a dreidel? How did you…?”

Hera let out a nervous laugh tinged with static. “Oh, you know, doesn’t everyone want a poorly made dreidel for Hanukkah?”

“No. I didn’t even know that you knew I was Jewish.”

“Yeah, well, I have all your files uploaded in my consciousness, remember? Cutter includes everything.”

“Huh.” Minkowski continued to turn the dreidel over and over in her hands, expression still skeptical.

Hera sighed. “I heard you sending a message to Mr. Koudelka that one time,” she admitted. Minkowski opened her mouth in outrage, but Hera talked over her. “I couldn’t help it, okay? Near-omniscience? Remember?” She sighed, recalling the memory. “I remember you were talking about how this used to be your favorite part of Hanukkah when you were younger. And, well, how you two would play together, and…” She trailed off. “I thought you might like it.”

Minkowski paused. “You know, Hanukkah isn’t even that big of a holiday, gentiles only make such a big deal out of it because sometimes it coincides with—”

“I know, I know, but I thought you might like it.”

“…I do. Thank you,” Minkowski said, somewhat begrudgingly. 

“Don’t expect another seven gifts, understand?”

“Of course. Thank you.”

The two women—one robotic, one flesh-and-blood—were silent for a few minutes. Minkowski drifted in the quiet hum of her room, listening to the static from Hera’s comms. Suddenly, remembering something, she jerked to life.

“Wait. You don’t have hands.”

“Very astute, Lieutenant. Thank you for noticing.”

“You—” Minkowski struggled for a few seconds whether to debate Hera’s sarcasm or the laws of physics. Deciding on the laws of physics, she plunged onward. “How did you get this? There’s only one person on this ship who has advanced knowledge of the properties of metal, and a lab, and—” She stopped. “Oh.” She took a few seconds to gather her thoughts while Hera waited patiently. “You don’t mean—”

“Yeah.”

Minkowski may have been a smart woman, but this was too much even for her to process. “So Hilbert made this,” she said, voice flat.

“Yep.”

“Why would he…” Minkowski shook her head, still processing the news. “Hera, could you explain to me exactly what happened? Exactly why, you know, Hilbert decided he wanted to make this dreidel? Can you explain why he suddenly possesses the barest semblance of humanity?”

Hera did her best to make her voice chipper and innocent. “Oh, you know, he probably just wanted to do something nice for his commanding officer. I told him my idea, and he went with it.”

Minkowski snorted. “And?”

“And I also threatened him with the possibility of cold showers for the foreseeable future.” Minkowski nodded, but Hera pressed on. “But I’m also willing to believe it was a little bit of the first option, too, you know? I mean, it took a while, and he barely complained. Plus, I think he put a lot of effort into carving it.”

Minkowski considered this for a few minutes, shifting the weight of the misshapen dreidel from hand to hand. After a few moments, Hera spoke again.

“Do you want to play?”

Minkowski snorted. “With who? Hilbert? No offense, Hera, but I don’t know if he’s exactly in the Hanukkah spirit—”

“With me.”

Minkowski raised an eyebrow. “You—”

“I know, I don’t have a corporeal presence, and we don’t have gelt or anything, but—you could spin for me.”

There was silence for a few moments, then a dull thud of metal on metal. “You got shin.” 

Minkowski’s quarters were quiet for the next few minutes, aside from the gentle thud of the dreidel spinning and falling. The two women acknowledged the pointlessness of playing dreidel with no gelt, but remained quiet. Somewhere seven and a half light years away from the Hephaestus, Dominic Koudelka celebrated in silence. Hera and Minkowski played on.


	3. Chapter 3

Alexander Hilbert’s quarters are quiet.

They’re always quiet. He can’t remember the last time anyone came into his room of their own volition. He can’t blame them—he barely comes into his own quarters, if he can help it. He spends most of his time in his lab. Or at least he used to. In the past couple years, he’s become quite accustomed to the inside of a broom closet.

He hasn’t lost his mind, though. He takes pride in that fact. He’s changed his name so many times that he barely remembers them all; been in space so long that he forgets what the earth used to feel like beneath his feet. While everyone else on this ship forgets what time it is, what month it is, he always remembers.

Tonight is December 31st. Tonight is December 31st, and Hilbert is thinking.

He’s thinking about how the sky looked like it was falling the day after the nuclear meltdown. He’s forgotten so much about those days, but he’ll always remember the moment he looked outside his bedroom window and say the sky turn yellow, then red, then black, then how ashes began to fall. He remembers _The sky is falling Olga_ and how Olga wrapped him in her arms and said _We’ll be fine you’ll be fine Dmitri it’s just a bomb Dmitri_ and he remembers not much else about that day except there were some bodies he barely recognized.

It’s amazing how much ash looks like snow in the moonlight.

He used to like snow. He remembers that, at least. You’ve got to like snow if you’re living in Russia, he supposes, but there was something different about it, something different about the way it felt. It made him feel safe. It made him feel warm, in a way. In his eyes, in the blurred memories of a toddler, it looked like cotton falling from the sky, and there was something safe about that.

He remembers how Olga looked that one day, the worst day. He remembers waking up first, the way he always did, and he remembers looking at his older sister, the way he always did, and that’s most of what he remembers. He remembers touching her cheek, then her forehead, then her shoulder. He remembers shaking her hard, just to make sure.

He thinks he stayed at her side that day, but it’s hard to tell. It seems unrealistic that he would have tried to carry her around or mourn her in any way. He was used to seeing corpses everywhere. He saw every member of his family litter the floor of his overcrowded apartment on the day of the meltdown.

In a way, Hilbert wants to romanticize the one day, the day he woke up and saw Olga lying on the ground, the day that there was something wrong. There’s still some part of his brain that wants to tell him that he tried to bury her, that he took her locket from around her neck and carried it around into adulthood, that he at least wept. But in his heart of hearts, he knows it’s not true. Even at his age, he had no time to mourn.

Death is permanent. No amount of crying will change that.

Here, now, floating in his quarters, gazing at a constantly changing star, Hilbert takes a deep breath, wishing he could succumb to the inky blackness of the sky just outside. He’s alive. He’s alive, for now. Five minutes from now and he’ll be in another year, another year he never imagined surviving.

And next year? Next year will Kepler finally kill him? Or will it be Captain Lovelace, or Commander Minkowski? Or will the star consume him? Will a window shatter, sucking his fragile body out to the stars? Or will it be something else entirely—a virus, or leftover radiation poisoning that would have killed him at one point or another? It happens. It happened to everyone else.

Hilbert closes his eyes and takes a breath—

Except he’s not Alexander Hilbert, he’s Dmitri Volodin, and he’s five years old, and he has older siblings that he can’t remember. The whole sky has turned black. His hair is falling out in clumps. His sister holds his hand, and in the other, she clutches a cat that died three hours ago.

Except he’s not that version of Dmitri anymore, he’s older, wiser, working on a project, and a Mr. Carter is offering him a job, and he says yes, because how could he not?

And he’s Elias Selberg now. Nobody suspects him. Nobody should—nobody’s going to die. He is the comic relief in the romantic comedy that Fourier and Hui have been acting out for the past few months. He is going to change the world.

And he’s Alexander Hilbert now, again. The same place he always ends up. He’s the villain in everyone’s story. He’s the one thing that connects everyone. Minkowski, Lovelace, Kepler—they all hate him. He doesn’t mind it. It makes things easier.

Hilbert floats somewhere just below the ceiling of his quarters, drifting to the left. He watches the star for any changes. One year shifts into another. Nobody notices.


End file.
